5 tips

OKP

Are You Really That Busy?

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the excuse “I don’t have time”, I would be luxuriating in early retirement by now. But is it really a lack of time that is the problem, or a lack of productiveness?

Today, I thought I would share my top 5 tips for worker smarter and getting more out of your work day.

1) Prioritise your daily tasks. Too many people make the mistake of doing the easiest tasks first and find they run out of time to complete harder tasks later in the day. Instead you should prioritising you daily tasks and tackle the most important/urgent ones first.

2) Follow the 80/20 rule by devoting 80% of your day to completing the top 20% of your daily tasks.

3) Know when you are most productive and schedule your day accordingly. If you are not a morning person or suffer from a post-lunch slump, schedule less demanding tasks for these times or find a way to give yourself an mental “kick-start”

4) Manage your meetings. Unproductive meetings are a massive time waster so make sure when meeting that the agenda is clear, you agree on a finish time and you keep an eye on your watch.

5) Check your email less – don’t let these drive the agenda for you’re day. Checking your email regularly throughout the day will distract you from your priority tasks and make you lose focus as you mind wanders across the different subjects presented in your inbox. It is much more efficient to schedule several times throughout the day where you attend to your email.

Why not try and implement some of these strategies? You may just find that you do have the time to write that strategy, implement that new program or undertake that donor development activity.

And a take 5!, A quick 5 minute brainstorm, stretch or walk around the block is good for the mind and more than often stimulates creativity and solution based thinking.